BMC Teammachine SLR

“The Teammachine has won them all: the Tour de France, the Olympics, World Champions…

BMC Teammachine SLR

“The Teammachine has won them all: the Tour de France, the Olympics, World Champions…

“The Teammachine has won them all: the Tour de France, the Olympics, World Championships, and gruelling Classics. Despite its success we haven’t been resting on our laurels … to remain at the top, the best must evolve.” – BMC

Photography: Philipp Forstner

These words read like the usual marketing rhetoric surrounding any brand’s new release, but what sets BMC apart? Though these claims seems generic they are entirely true. A bike that has remained testament to the ingenuity and technical expertise of it’s builder, the Teammachine SLR01, has again been redesigned and rebuilt, yet on first glance and yet again it seems nothing has changed.

It couldn’t be better timing for BMC to release a new incarnation of their top of the line pro model, as it seems their riders are representing their ethos equally well with this season’s arrival of an almost unstoppable and possibly an evolved, Greg Van Avermaet. Though will he embrace the new Teammachine’s most notable feature? disc brakes.

Discs remain contentious, UCI and riders still undecided, but this latest move by BMC, placing discs on their flagship, represents yet another manufacturer firmly backing their commitment. In Swiss fashion, it wasn’t simply throwing some extra carbon around the fork and stays, but required going back to the drawing board. BMC utilised virtual prototypes in their Accelerated Composites Evolution (ACE) system, culminating in odd and oversized tube shapes and an assymetrical frame, which is claimed to be even more Super, Light, and Rigid (SLR) than it’s predecessor. Interestingly the new frame shapes have moved into the rim-brake models too.

“We’ve become obsessed with integration.” Their new Integrated Cockpit System (ICS) is further proof BMC have evolved, possibly due to market forces as the sleek front-end and seat-post setup appear eerily reminiscent of another European brand with equally recognisable bikes. This time BMC have gone a step further, integrating the Di2 junction box into the frame. It is often forgotten that these brands are constantly innovating and trading, BMC’s hidden clamp design was in it’s infancy on the TMR01 in 2012.

We could continue to bore you with all the fine-print details and whitepapers, but we’ll leave you to that (follow the links and pretty pictures below). All the tech-talk and press releases aside we hope to ride and bring you a full review of the real thing. The SLR01 was an exceptional bike to begin with and now with discs and these advances, we can’t wait. As for the new rim-brake version, there lies the question burning a hole in our pockets and our minds: will we, the average rider, notice the difference? Regardless it does look ace, super, light, rigid, and fully integrated.